You are here

rabble blogs are the personal pages of some of Canada's most insightful progressive activists and commentators. All opinions belong to the writer; however, writers are expected to adhere to our guidelines. We welcome new bloggers -- contact us for details.

rabble.ca upgrades its software and some FAQs

Today rabble.ca upgraded the software the site is built on. The primary purpose of the upgrade is to move to a more current version of the back-end so that we can take advantage of new features and make rabble.ca run smoother.

For most users, we've kept things relatively the same for now, but some aspects have had to change and you will notice some slight differences.

You may have noticed that rabble.ca is a fairly big site, and once running live, new errors may surface. Please help us discover and address these quickly by reporting them on this form.

UPGRADE FAQ

WHERE IS MY MENU? Perhaps the biggest item most users will see right away is the disappearance of the My Menu bar on the right. Everything that was here has now moved to the menu at the top right of the page. Clicking on 'Content' will bring you to your workspace where you can create new content and see all of your past posts.

MY USER PAGE HAS CHANGED, WHY? It hasn't changed much. Content has now been separated into two blocks to show you clearly what posts of yours have had recent activity, and to keep track of your most recent comments.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE STATUS BOX? It was a nice little feature that was fun for a few users. We may bring it back, but it is a prime example of a piece of the software that when upgraded, it had significantly expanded it's feature set well beyond our needs and caused us concern with site performance.

THE CONTENT CREATION FORM LOOKS DIFFERENT! Yup. Though very little is actually different here, we did try and clean it up some. You'll notice that some of the broken features in the WYSIWIG (Body editor) now work. For example, formatting an image's alignment and padding.

THIS THING I WANT TO DO DOESN'T WORK THE WAY I WANT IT TOO. WELL TO BE HONEST IT NEVER DID. WHY? It's true, some things didn't work the way everyone wanted them too on the past site, and this is part of the motivation for the upgrade. See the references to the contact form above and let us know. We'll put it into our support queue, and hopefully this is something we can address now.

WOW, IT MUST REALLY TAKE A LOT OF WORK TO KEEP A BIG SITE LIKE RABBLE GOING! HOW ELSE CAN I HELP?Well it wouldn't be a proper FAQ if we didn't mention that yes it does take a lot more time and resources than we have available, but the good news is you can help with a financial contribution if you so desire. Check out http://rabble.ca/support and thanks!

More people are reading rabble.ca than ever and unlike many news organizations, we have never put up a paywall – at rabble we’ve always believed in making our reporting and analysis free to all, while striving to make it sustainable as well. Media isn’t free to produce. rabble’s total budget is likely less than what big corporate media spend on photocopying (we kid you not!) and we do not have any major foundation, sponsor or angel investor. Our main supporters are people and organizations -- like you. This is why we need your help. You are what keep us sustainable.

rabble.ca has staked its existence on you. We live or die on community support -- your support! We get hundreds of thousands of visitors and we believe in them. We believe in you. We believe people will put in what they can for the greater good. We call that sustainable.

So what is the easy answer for us? Depend on a community of visitors who care passionately about media that amplifies the voices of people struggling for change and justice. It really is that simple. When the people who visit rabble care enough to contribute a bit then it works for everyone.

And so we’re asking you if you could make a donation, right now, to help us carry forward on our mission. Make a donation today.